Why A Call Centre Family is Not Perfect

There are downsides to being a Call Centre Family.

I don’t know how many times I’ve written praising and raving about the AnswerPlus family.

And while it goes without saying that we have something extremely special within these walls, I would be remiss if I did not mention that downfalls that do come with having such a close knit group of individuals working together.

These are some of the struggles that we face, in some cases daily. Perhaps you can learn from our mistakes and perfect the solutions we are still working towards.

1. If your family doesn’t tell you the truth, then who will?

More then a few times we have had fall outs between family members, because we treat each other like a family and so we tend to say what is on our mind.

Which is fine, however during work hours is not always the more appropriate time to tell another person what you really think of their new hair cut.

Fences always get mended and apologizes are accepted, but as a family we are still learning to mind our manners at times.

2. We hurt together.

I’m sure from our Facebook posts you have noticed that we spend a lot of time socializing. It’s to be expected. In this line of work being good at the job goes beyond customer service skills, it’s a personality trait. An innate need to speak to people and most importantly, to actively listen to what others have to say is a requirement.

The result being that when one of us is hurt badly, the rest of us feel it.

Everyones smile become a bit forced, laughter in the call centre grinds to a halt and we become very intent on our calls. We avoid talking about the elephant in the room, it’s a bit to raw to speak about.

Sure we learn how to stand and walk once again, and yes some of us can cope a bit better than others. But when the entire culture of the workplace is centred around the team environment you have to recognize that on the rare occasion that ship takes a direct hit, it will sink very quickly.

3. Laughter is contagious.

When you enjoy being together you laugh and joke. No negatives there. Everyone knows that when the phone rings you answer it and it gets your full attention. However, sometimes it isn’t as easy as simply focusing on your call. Because well, when you get laughing you can become a bit loud.

The microphones in call centres are extremely sensitive. They have to be. So we are always having to check ourselves and ensure that we aren’ getting a bit out of hand.

So far so good, but this does take constant monitoring.

Like I said. AnswerPlus is a family, but we are not perfect, and I wouldn’t want to give the impression that we were. We work hard, daily, to make keep what we have. It wasn’t built overnight and it cannot be lost overnight, but it is a labour of love.